Environmental Health Practice: An Identity in Crisis

Environmental health practice is facing an identity crisis. Not because our work lacks impact, but because our work lacks a coherent narrative. Environmental health practice needs a brand that speaks our truth and secures our place in the future of health protection. The brand of environmental health practice must be more than a label. It needs to be an asset that our industry can leverage to build identity, recognisability, credibility, relevance and a unique value proposition. A strong brand will allow us to express the unique impact of our role and thus, it needs to capture the most central component of our work that unmistakably differentiates it from anything else. A rapid review of the literature was performed using systematic methods to discern a coherent narrative capturing the essence of environmental health practice. Through application of a critical lens shaped through professional experience, a novel narrative was synthesized of the key defining component of our work. This narrative establishes the work of environmental health practitioners as a unique value proposition and forms the basis for a brand that we can fearlessly project and reverberate. It represents the makings for an unmistakable identity. The future of environmental health practice depends on environmental health practitioners establishing a brand by building awareness of the unique value of our work.